Observations
by AirJordan8
Summary: Ben wants to control dreams. Jack and Kate are his test subjects. Inspired by the movie Inception, one-shot, Jate AU.


_This idea came to me after seeing Inception. It's just a little one-shot that I needed to get out of my head. BTW, I highly recommend seeing Inception if you haven't already. It's amazing! There's even a flight from Sydney to Los Angeles, talk of "dying alone" and "leaps of faith". Yes, I notice stuff like that._

_DISCLAIMER: I don't own Lost. But if I did (or if I magically turned into Damon or Carlton), I would make a Lost amusment park. It would be on an island and the only way to get there? Oceanic Flight 815 of course!_

It was a simple idea, really. Control people's dreams. Dreams were, in a lot of ways, just like being awake. You felt emotion, you felt pain, you made choices, you formed opinions. And Ben knew those emotions, those opinions. They sometimes bled into real life whether you like it or not. You might not even know it, but somewhere, subconsciously, your dreams didn't just go away when you opened your eyes in the morning. With the power to control dreams, he would have the power to control people's minds. And that was the greatest power a person could have.

It had started with Juliet. No matter how hard he tried, he could never get her to feel anything for him. But never again. Soon, he would be able to do anything he wanted. He would be in control, and he could finally stop wishing he could see Jacob. He needed subjects, of course, so he turned back to those plane crash survivors, living on the beach. He ignored them for the most part, after the experiments they were doing on James Ford resulted in Juliet running off with him, but he kept tabs on them. (You never know when those clueless, nosy folks might come in handy) So he sent Richard to get a list from Jacob. Richard, Ben could have sworn, just wrote down these names himself to cause him problems.

_Jack Shephard _

_Kate Austen_

Great. Out of 40 something clueless plane crash survivors, "Jacob" picks the two most knowledgeable and dangerous ones.

But Richard insisted, so he sent Tom and a few others to retrieve his new subjects. (It wasn't hard, it seemed, these two were always tromping through the jungle alone) He separated them immediately and placed them in two separate sections of the medical station. Not an hour after they arrived, he started getting complaints from his staff. "Jack broke another plate"; "Kate's not eating". God. He served these people soup and cheeseburgers, far better than that DHARMA crap they had back at their beach. Couldn't they give him a damn break? No, the answer was, they couldn't. By the time he tried to give them dinner, Jack was using the shards of their own plate (which he swiftly broke) against them and Kate was on a hunger strike, demanding to see Jack.

So he ditched the "nice guy" routine and got right to the point. Because Jack was clearly the more dangerous of the two (while Kate was sneaky one), he was first. Ben had him put under and brought into the observation room. It was basically an empty room, where Ben had placed a double bed and had IVs ready in case more sedatives were needed, with a large, one-way mirror. Once Jack was out, he placed him in the bed and stood back to wait for him to get into a deep enough sleep. Ben waited patiently; he gave him a full hour. But Jack tossed and turned, only asleep because of the drugs being pumped into his system would not allow him to wake up. So, he put Jack back and brought in Kate. She was obviously the heavier sleeper of the pair, but he got the same result.

By now, he was really questioning Richard. Jacob (or whoever thought it would be funny to bring him the two insomniacs of the island) was playing a cruel joke. He was sure of it. "Maybe they miss each other," Richard suggested. "You know they share a tent back at their beach."

Ben turned this idea down quickly. "They're not even conscious, Richard," he'd insisted. Richard had left without another word, leaving Ben to his thoughts.

They were going to try different situations. Yes, that had to be it. These people had been sleeping on airline chairs for almost a year. (Or at least that's what his spies had told him) They're just not used to normal beds. But he was getting sick of doing each experiment twice, once for Jack and once for Kate. So, he put them side by side (It was a double bed, after all), made the adjustments to the lighting, bed and temperature, gave Tom strict orders to get him if anything happened, and went for lunch. He hadn't even gotten halfway through his meal when Tom appeared in front of him. "We're got a slight problem. I think you should come take a look."

"What is it?" Ben had demanded.

"Just come take a look," Tom repeated. Ben entered the observation room to not one but two shocks. First, they were both in a deep sleep, perfect for his tests. And second, Jack and Kate were wrapped around each other as if they'd fallen asleep like that. Her head was on his shoulder, snuggled into his neck with one arm pressed against his chest. And he was flat on his back, arms holding her tightly against his side, protectively. In this position, he would never be able to run the tests. Ben groaned. Not only was he sure now that no one but himself could handle their "visitors", but Alex had somehow made her way into the room and was now cooing over Jack and Kate like they were old friends of hers. They hadn't even been touching when he left, they'd been knocked out before they got to the observation room. How in the world, with no knowledge of the other's presence, could this happen? Ben ordered them to be pulled apart and watched as two of his men went into the room. The plane crash survivors resisted and as soon as they were pried from each other's arms, their computer screens showed that it would be impossible to do the research now. They were back to their tossing and turning state.

"Let go of them," Ben ordered. Seconds after his men took their hands off Jack and Kate, they were back, cuddling up against each other in their earlier pose.

Richard stood back, arms crossed, watching Ben rub his temples and stare at Jack and Kate, trying to think of his next move. But Richard knew there was no "next move". It was over. Jacob had never intended on allowing Ben this power. Jacob had never intended on Ben succeeding. He had been showing him something. By writing down those two names, he was teaching Ben a lesson. You couldn't create this, not with Juliet or any other girl. This was real, it was instinctive, it was raw. This was the very definition of soul mates, of a destiny to be together. And no amount of science and mind-control and experiments, will ever change that.

_Please review, and I'll take you to my Lost amusment park someday._


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